Monday, June 24, 2013

After I broke my foot, I have been living my life in our living hall with just one small carry on bag so I could avoid the stairway.

The experience reminded me of an article I had read about living with a lot less which was very
interesting. I think it is worth sharing. I mentioned to my husband many times that I wanted to live with a lot less since we were getting old. However, the experience with my broken foot, has really made me fully realize that we could. Like
the author of this article, I really do not want to be cluttered
with excess belongings! I want to give away and sell all my possessions (except my Quay Lo). LOL!

Jokes aside,
I knew I would be much happier to live more simply with less. I did not want to be a slave
to things! I know this sounds very Buddhist, or at least minimalist, but it appeals to me deeply.

Then,
something struck my mind; how could I really become completely free of possessions if I still wanted to bake and cook? I satisfied my concern by remembering that I could bake this healthy loaf of bread in a counter top microwave cum convection oven, and
it turned out so beautiful! Who needs a big four burner oven? Not me. So I can still become the Zen chef after all. As long as I am sure not to toss out the mixer, or that large spoon, or that big porcelain bowl I use for resting dough, or the canisters with the ingredients all line up so trimly on my kitchen countertop, and I must have that......

Zucchini
Bread

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups
all-purpose flour

1/2 tsp sea salt

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp nutmeg

1 jumbo egg

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1 cup granulated sugar

1 1/2 vanilla extract

1 cup grated zucchini

1/2 cup chopped hazel nut

Method:

Grease and
flour one 8 x 4 inch pans. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C). Sift flour, salt, baking powder, soda, and cinnamon together
in a bowl. Beat eggs, oil, vanilla, and sugar together in a large bowl.
Add sifted ingredients to the creamed mixture, and beat well. Stir in zucchini
and nuts until well combined. Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake for 40 to 60 minutes, or until tester inserted in the
center comes out clean. Cool in pan on rack for 20 minutes. Remove bread from
pan, and completely cool.

Monday, June 17, 2013

Lessons learnt from my mum always stays with me. My mum
never let me waste food. She would make sure I finished every bit in my bowl. I
was taught to take what I can eat only and leaving food and let it waste is
totally unacceptable. She even scared me by saying if I leave a grain of rice in my bowl, I will marry a husband who have a face full of scars. LOL!

Nowadays, children are raised in an environment where
parents rushed to fulfil their desire so they grow up to be indifferent towards what they get or own, including food. My mum said, it is
the parents’ doing that they developed this behavior. I think she is right. So
it is the parents’ responsibility to eduate their children that they must not
waste food.

So under the training of my mum, I could never stand leftovers food starring at me when I open my
refrigerator. I had this Tupperware of left over pulled pork which I could have
make pulled pork burgers again but then I wanted to do something different with
it. What I came up with is this.

Monday, June 10, 2013

The above makes me think ofa “ball” story I heard from one of my ex boss'. Somehow, it seems to underscore the joke above. He told me one of his golf “kaki” (mates) brought
home a few boxes of new golf balls and handed them to his wife to put away one evening when he returned home from a fantastic golf session. When
dinner was served that evening, he saw a huge bowl of soup on the table and nothing else. Know
what the soup was? “Golf ball soup”!!! LOL! I am sure you know why he got
that! So gentlemen, be careful, be very careful what you give to your lady. If you give her the right “balls”, she might make this delicious meal for you instead.

Mix all ingredients
in a large bowl by hand except bread crumbs and sauce. Roll meatballs to about the size
of a golf ball or slightly smaller. Roll meat balls in bread crumbs. Heat oil
and fried meat balls till golden brown. Set the fried meat balls on paper kitchen towel to drain the oil and set aside. Heat tomato
sauce in the pan and add in the fried meat balls and let it simmer for about 10
mins. Garnish with parsley before serving.

You can
serve the meatballs with just freshly baked bread or pasta. I served them with pasta
and garlic butter sauté zucchini.

Monday, June 3, 2013

"Yau Yuen Chin lay lang seong wui, Moe Yuen tui mien but seong foong" (A Chinese proverb with the meaning: If one is destined to meet another, they will even from afar, if not, they will not know each other even they are face to face."

This expains the belief in "Destiny" by example. Do you believe in destiny? I believe in destiny but I do not think it is pre-ordained. I think destiny is self created by choices we take in our lives. For example, how I got to know these two nice people, Fan and Treedson is through my choice to accept the invitation from the "nourish" team to be the judge for the baking competition "Think Out of the Shell" sponsored by Nutriplus last October. During the whole duration of competition, I had fun with all the contestants...

Fan and I

(Photo courtesy from "nourish")

Kelly, Treedson, I and Fan

(Photo courtesy from "nourish")

.....and since then I have been keeping touch with a few on facebook. Fan and I have been talking for months about a get-together but just could not find a time where both of us were available. Finally we did it. Fan and Treedson came to my house to have tea with me. (This was before my trip to USA). Fan brought a lemon butter cake, carrot cake and her famous brownies while Treedson brought with him a box of yummy madeleines and a bottle of champagne to celebrate our friendship. As the host, I could not just serve coffee and tea, could I? So, I decided to introduced them to a new dessert which was recently introduced to me by my Quay Lo. Fried Pie but this time, I put in my own little twist. The original recipe did not call for lemongrass and pecans. I included these two ingredients because I wanted to use them up to clear space in my fridge. So I made a blueberry paste infused with lemongrass and added toasted pecan for the filling. You will only know how good this dessert is when you try it. True enough, like me, Fan and Treedson loved the fried pie. Don't let the photo of this fried pie fool you. It tasted far better than it looks. This is a very difficult dessert to get a photo that can suggest its delicious flavour.Fried pie with chopped apple & pecans in blueberry paste infused with lemongrass and anise.

Ingredients:Enough oil to fry the piePie Dough (Please click to get the recipe)Filling (see recipe that follows)1 egg beaten for egg wash

Ingredients for the filling:

1/2 cup toasted pecan, roughly chopped

1 apple, remove skin, cored and chopped

Blueberry
lemon grass and anise paste

250gmfrozen blueberries, thawed

8 tbs sugar

6 - 8 tbswater

2 stalks
lemongrass (tender inner white parts only, smashed)

1/2 tsp ground anise or 1 whole anise

1 tbs flour (more when needed to thicken the paste)

Method:

To make the paste, place blueberries, sugar, water, lemongrass and ground anise in a saucepan over medium
heat. Bring the mixture to a boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Add flour and let simmer until
the paste thickens, about 10 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat and let the
paste cool completely. Remove lemon grass. Pour mixture into blender and blend till smooth. In a bowl, mix blended mixture with chopped apple and toasted chopped pecan and mix well.

Assemble the pie:

Roll doll out in about 1/2 cm thick and cut out 4 inches circles. Spoon 1 heaping tbs of prepared filling onto the center of the dough and then seal it. Lightly brush with egg wash on both sides and then deep fry the pie in hot oil. Drain the oil in paper towel before serving with either whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.

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MEET QUAY PO

A LITTLE ABOUT THIS QUAY PO

Before I was married to my "Quay Lo" (Guaylo) husband, I did not know how to bake or cook. Subsequently I learned some baking and cooking Western cuisine from him, and providing his food for him launched an interest in cooking in general. Many of my Chinese friends and family told me that "Quay" is the wrong spelling for devil in Cantonese. The right spelling should be "Kwai" or "Guay". Well, somehow I like the spelling "Quay" better although I have to agree that it does not sound very Cantonese. Try asking a Westerner to pronounce "Kwai" and you will probably hear "Quay" haha. Whether is "Quay" or "Kwai" or "Guay, just know the devil woman is me when you see Quay Po Cooks. My hubby said if people pronounce "Quay" as "Key" is even better because I am the key to his heart. LOL!

Only now, have I started to learn the traditional Cantonese cuisine of my Mum. She cooks fabulously and all her specialties are divine. These two interests, my husband's Western food, and my mother's traditional food, prompted me to document them so they will not be lost.

Here, I wish to share my cooking and baking experience with my readers. I also hope to inspire those who do not know how to cook or bake to do so because, trust me, if I can, you can too.

Something I'd like to mention is that I find that many people are rather unwilling to share their recipes. However, for me, I think differently. I think good recipes should be shared thus allowing as many people to enjoy it as possible. Unless those recipes are for doing business, I don't see why we want to keep them all to ourselves. So if you are generous in sharing your recipes, you are welcome to share on my blog. Send the recipes to me and better still with pictures of the final products and I will be very happy to post them them with credits to you of course.

Our cuisine is a deeply embedded part of our culture. When two cultures come together under the same roof the results in the kitchen can sometimes be comedic, sometimes confrontational, but more often it is a journey full of surprises and discovery. There is joy in our food. If we think upon this, it is intuitively obvious. This blog is a journey of joy and sharing, reflecting what the French like to call "joie de vivre" (joy of living). No one could be more different from one another then my husband and my mother. Yet one thing they share in common is knowing intuitively that food, cooking, and sharing can be avenues of joy in life itself. So herein, help yourself, to a little joy and , if you like it, share it with your own family and friends. Joy is something that should be shared.

You made my day!

AWARDS

I wish to thank those who have given me AWARDS. I feel really honored and thankful to you all. I have decided not to display the awards in my blog or pass it on because I feel it is impossible for me to pass it on to all the deserving blogs. They are so many and I do not feel comfortable leaving anyone out. I hope you appreciate how I feel. Once again Thanks a Million for thinking of me.